Australia’s Pacific problems persist as the Red Dragon lurks

“When you come here you find friends to all – and enemies to none”, Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister declared during this week’s celebrations marking his nation’s 50th anniversary of independence from Australia.

James Marape’s proud assertion of PNG’s long held non-aligned foreign policy should have been a clear signal to Australia’s Prime Minister and other VIPs in the audience that securing a military alliance with the Pacific neighbour won’t be easy.

Anthony Albanese, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Pacific Islands Affairs Minister Pat Conroy had all flown to Port Moresby hoping to clinch a signature on an historic defence treaty shutting out China from any similar cooperation.

Instead, for the second time in two weeks, the PM saw his government’s efforts to secure an exclusive security agreement with a Pacific neighbour fall through at the last moment.

Last week Mr Albanese also failed to sign a sweeping defence and economic deal with Vanuatu ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum in Honiara, where the Solomon Islands Government struck its own security deal with China in 2019.

For many years Australia has been worried about China gaining a similar foothold in Vanuatu, a country which has so far resisted ratifying the sweeping Nakamal Agreement which was first agreed to with the Albanese government in 2022.

Despite two embarrassing setbacks in two weeks, the Australian Government is remaining upbeat about soon inking the historic Pukpuk Treaty with PNG, and downplaying suggestions Beijing is successfully running interference.

“This wasn’t a failure, it was a simple logistical delay that’s already been explained,” Pat Conroy tells The Nightly after returning to Australia.

“The Prime Ministers of both countries have agreed to the words – and people should focus on the fact Australia is about to enter into only its third alliance,” insists the Pacific Island Affairs minister.

This week it emerged that a PNG Cabinet meeting on Monday evening did not have enough Ministers for a quorum to ratify the proposed treaty with Australia, because several had already returned to their home provinces for independence celebrations.

Instead, on Wednesday prime ministers Albanese and Marape were forced to sign a hastily cobbled together communique agreeing to the principles of the treaty which both men are confident can be given final approval “within weeks”.

At home the Opposition has pounced on the Pacific stumbles, accusing the Albanese government of being dangerously “long on spin, short on delivery”.

“Anthony Albanese promised a new era of diplomacy in the Pacific,” Shadow Foreign Minister Michaelia Cash wrote this week in The West Australian.

“He promised seriousness, depth, and outcomes. What we are seeing instead is failure, drift, and humiliation.”

“The Albanese Government appears more focused on chasing applause at the United Nations General Assembly in New York for its stance on Palestinian statehood than on delivering outcomes in the Pacific”.

The Coalition well remembers the shellacking it received from Labor after Beijing managed to surprise the region by entering a security pact with the strategically located Solomon Islands, back when the Morrison government was in office.

Pacific Affairs Minister Pat Conroy forcefully rejects the criticism and denies that Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been “missing in action” ahead of her visit to the UN next week in New York.

“The Opposition have no credibility on international diplomacy, they endangered relationships in the region with their position on climate change”, he argues.

The close ally of Anthony Albanese is even more scathing of Greens Senator David Shoebridge, who this week accused the Prime Minister of travelling to Vanuatu and PNG with a “colonial plan” that failed to deliver treaties.

“The presumption of an Anglo-Saxon Greens senator to claim that he knows better than PNG’s leader is the height of arrogance and presumption and demonstrates that the Greens political party have absolutely no clue what is happening in national security,” Mr Conroy said.

Australian officials are less worried about Beijing’s influence over Papua New Guinea’s Government, although Beijing has a highly visible presence in Port Moresby and has been pouring diplomatic effort into the country in recent years.

This week The Nightly revealed how a special envoy appointed by Chinese President Xi Jinping held “fruitful exchanges on bilateral relations and practical cooperation” with PNG’s Prime Minister on the same day his cabinet delayed signing the Australian treaty.

Later a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Port Moresby insisted that “the Chinese side adheres to the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs”.

“We respect PNG’s right to conclude a bilateral treaty with other countries on a voluntary basis. However, such a treaty should not be exclusive in nature, nor should it restrict or prevents a sovereign country from cooperating with a third party for any reason.”

Publicly Australia rejects suggestions that China helped to stall this week’s signing of the PNG treaty but acknowledges there is a “permanent contest” in the region to be a preferred security partner.

Over coming days and weeks PNG’s Defence Minister Billy Joseph will be dispatched to China and other key nations such as Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia to explain his nation’s proposed military alliance with Australia.

The Australian Government insists the PNG Minister’s regional tour is not a consultation, but instead a courtesy call to brief key partners on a document his Prime Minister has already locked in.

One person watching the developments in PNG closely is Kurt Campbell, the former US deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, who is visiting Australia.

“The politics of the Pacific are increasingly contested, and the great game is afoot,” Dr Campbell told the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday.

“I will say I’ve been very impressed at how Australia has stepped into the gap (because) you’ve seen some countries, ­including the United States, fall back with respect to our aid and our assistance programs.”

When The Nightly asked the former chief Indo-Pacific policy adviser about the PNG government’s delay in signing a treaty with Australia, Dr Campbell alluded to possible interference from Beijing.

“I think it suggests that this is a region at strategic play, and that China is relentless, and they use all venues of engagement to try to block and block initiatives like the ones that Australia has initiated,” he said.

The former top-ranking Biden official also called on Mr Albanese to help convince the Trump administration to re-engage in the Pacific following severe cuts to US aid and diplomatic presence in the region.

“I fully believe that Prime Minister Albanese will make the appeal to President Trump to re-engage, to continue the strong partnership with Australia in the Pacific,” he said.

Dr Campbell also praised Australia’s “comprehensive” diplomatic efforts in PNG, highlighting initiatives such as sports cooperation which he described as “ingenious and important.”

Under a tri-partite agreement struck between Australia, Papua New Guinea and the National Rugby League, a new PNG side is due to enter the NRL competition in 2028, but the deal can be scrapped if the Pacific nation inks any security deals with China.

Minister Conroy, himself a die-hard rugby league fan is hugely enthusiastic about the prospect of PNG’s entry into the NRL, and is full of praise for Peter V’landys, the chair of the ARLC for backing the move.

A nation-wide naming competition for the new PNG Rugby League side has received a huge response, and now PM Marape is sorting through the final list to decide the winning entry.

Australia’s PM, an equally enthusiastic league supporter will be hoping by the time his beloved South Sydney Rabbitohs face the PNG side, the defence treaty will have been well and truly locked in.